Federal 100: Pamela Wright

Putting the people to work. Challenges and hackathons are being launched by agencies across government, but NARA's Citizen Archivist project might be the most ambitious crowdsourcing effort of them all. And Wright, as NARA's chief innovation officer, is responsible for making it happen. A longtime agency employee -- she joined NARA in 2001 as a processing archivist -- she assumed her current role in December 2012 and immediately set about creating an innovation hub for the agency with the Citizen Archivist project as its cornerstone collaboration. The results have been deeper and better-documented datasets and a project that is improving Americans' understanding of their history.

FCW investigated efforts by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs to improve a joint data repository on military and veteran suicides. Something as impersonal and mundane as incomplete datasets could be exacerbating a national tragedy.